Experimental measurements of charge carrier mobility: lifetime products for large sample of pixilated CZT detectors

Abstract

Cadmium-Zinc-Telluride (CZT) is thought to be a primary work horse for hard X-ray astronomy in future. Due to the relatively large band-gap, it offers near room temperature operation while maintaining much better energy resolution then scintillator detectors operating in similar energy range. Further, CZT detectors are available in the form of pixilated detectors with area up to few cm²and hence it is possible to realize very large detector area by having an array of such pixilated CZT detectors. However, it is well known that the energy spectrum of mono-energetic X-ray measured by CZT detectors does not have a Gaussian shape but has significant low-energy tail. This is mainly due to relatively poor mobility and small life time of the charge carriers, particularly of holes, in the CZT crystals. Thus, in order to understand spectral response for a large array of CZT detectors consisting of multiple elements / pixels, it is essential to characterize the mobility-lifetime products of charge carriers for each individual elements / pixels. Here we present experimental measurements of charge carrier mobility-lifetime products for large sample of multi-pixel CZT detectors. The mobility-lifetime products are measured by simultaneously fitting a ‘CZT line’ model to pixel wise spectra of 122 keV X-rays from ⁵⁷Co at three different bias voltages. These were carried out as a part of selection of CZT detector modules for the “High Energy X-ray spectrometer (HEX)” onboard Indian moon mission – Chandrayaan-1.